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Phishing – This is what it looks like

The screen capture is of a phishing email I received yesterday. It looks perfectly legit, until you read it closely.

First, it is addressed to “Dear Member” Netflix knows my name. After all, they charge my credit card every month. This is the first tipoff.

Second, the text of the first paragraph is, “We recently failed to validate your information,we hold on record for your account, we need to ask to complete a brief validation process in order to verify details.” Notice the awkward grammar and sentence structure. It doesn’t sound like someone from customer service at a big US company like Netflix. Of course, I get legitimate emails that sound like this. Most of them are from technical support, though. In the interest of not helping the scheme, I won’t correct the sentence, but you can do it if you wish.

Third–and only some email clients will allow it–if you mouse over but do not click the link, you may be able to see the text of the link as a pop-up window (tooltip) in your email client. The address is not at Netflix, but part of it is businesscen…

This is a classic phishing scheme. An email that–on the surface–looks genuine. It has the right colors and logo. Look beneath the surface to see the details.

One other thing: even fairly sophisticated people fall for this type of scheme. The emails “hacked” from John Podesta were compromised with a phishing attack. According to one article, when Podesta emailed his IT specialist, he was told the email was “legitimate.” The IT specialist now claims it was a typo. It should have been “illegitimate.” Close but no banana…and no election victory either.